XHTML

Sell a Band

sellaband.com has an interesting business model. If you want to make money from your band you can sign up to their site and create a web site with some sample tracks. Then wait for 5,000 believers to each pay $10 for a share which grants the band a recording contract. The $10 gets them a share of advertising royalties (which seems extremely unlikely to recover the $50,000) and also a first-edition CD from the band ($10 is cheap for a CD). If there is an unpublished band you like then all you need to do is to find 5,000 people who can each spare $10.

The main advantage of the site seems to be as a central advertising point. Sure it would be better to record your own CD and sell it for $10 per copy (which is not difficult to do with little expense nowadays), but finding the 5,000 people who want to pay will be difficult.

It’s a pity that sellaband relies extensively on Flash, so I can’t use their site. Maybe someone else will copy the idea and use standard web pages that display in all browsers.